Publishing

Spotlight uses Craft for release management. Craft automatically determines version bumps from conventional commits and generates changelogs.

Release Workflow

1. Trigger the Release

Go to the Release GitHub Action and click “Run workflow”.

You can specify:

• Version: Leave as auto to determine from commits, or specify major, minor, patch, or an explicit version like 4.10.0
• Force: Check this to release even if there are release-blockers

Release Blockers

A release-blocker is any open PR with the release-blocker label. This prevents accidental releases when critical changes are pending. Use the Force option to override this check. See the Craft documentation for more details.

2. Review the Release Branch

Craft creates a release branch (e.g., release/4.10.0) with:

• Updated version in packages/spotlight/package.json
• Generated changelog in packages/spotlight/CHANGELOG.md

The CI will build and test this branch automatically.

3. Merge and Publish

Once the release branch CI passes:

1. Review the changelog and version bump
2. Merge the release branch to main
3. Craft creates a publish issue in getsentry/publish
4. A release manager adds the accepted label to approve the release
5. The publish workflow runs and:
   • Publishes @spotlightjs/spotlight to NPM
   • Creates a GitHub release with standalone binaries and Electron app
   • Tags the Docker image with the version and latest

Why getsentry/publish?

The getsentry/publish repository is Sentry’s central publishing system. It keeps sensitive credentials (NPM tokens, signing keys, etc.) secure and requires formal approval from release managers before publishing. This ensures releases are reviewed and prevents accidental or unauthorized publishes.

Artifacts

The CI build produces these artifacts that Craft uploads to the GitHub release:

Artifact	Description
built-packages	The npm package contents
spotlight-binaries	Standalone CLI binaries for all platforms
electron-binaries	Signed macOS Electron app (.dmg, .zip)